Salvage
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
Summary: 'It is his love that has mutilated you...'


First of all, thank you for taking a look at my fic. I really appreciate that you took the time.

As to the story... 

I. Do. Not. Know. What this is. @_@ Really, I don't. I dare say its weirder than 'Deliver Us From Evil'. I sat down to write another story for 'His and Her Circumstances', and suddenly my muse comes in drunk from Los Vegas and dumps this thing in my lap. It's one of two things (trust me, the other one isn't nearly as weird) I need to write before she's going to let me do anything remotely productive, such as working on stories I need o finish, as opposed to staring new ones. 

Like the title says, this is a one shot, taking place in between EPIII and ANH. Please leave feedback! I'm desperate. 

-Meredith 

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We interrupt your regularly scheduled feedback-song to bring you this announcement: 

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Today, to encourage feedback, we are taking a poll. Anakin: boxers or briefs? Thank you, and please enjoy the story. 

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Salvage   
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory   
mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com   
http://www.demando.net/   
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The night was in her hair, brushing against her neck like his long ago hands; Padme felt the movement of her legs beneath her, the pounding of her heels against the backs of her legs. Run, breathed the trees around her, their violet branches each loosing a deluge of petals, soft and fluttering, fake warm snow. It was like a nightmare, where everything is beautiful and you are the only ugly thing. Leaping over a raised root, Padme tumbled down a long, petal covered slope, landing heavily on her wings. She cried out, but somehow not from her throat; the folds at her back were delicate and painful to the touch. Biting her lip, she forced herself up on her palms, listening for the sound of marching through the heavy purple forest. She began to move again, up the other side of the slope on all fours and into the brush, before she came to stand upright. Her hands froze at her sides as she brought her wings close at the small of her spine-- after all her frustrated effort, she still could not move her arms and wings at the same time. Using one meant the temporary loss of the other, and her mind seemed incapable of splitting the signal. Wakefulness in her hands, she used them to propel her through the branches. The sound of boots on warm snow, blasters brushing against the lovely necks of trees, were getting closer. 

Desperate, she leapt for a low branch and pulled herself up, eyes searching for another length of salvation. Reaching for a higher bough, she unconsciously beat her wings to propel her forward. Her hands brushed against the branch, but could not take hold, and she fell again, into the chill embrace of shadows looking nothing like the trees that threw them. Her pain helped her to her fee, two kind hands supporting her back; Padme cast her opal gaze to the blur of fog, passing through the trees that looked like columns in Theed Palace, corridors leading to no where. Around her, the forest was as labored as His breathing, the sound she remembered in her nightmares. Briefly, the music of crystals brushing together seemed to sound from far off; Padme shuddered and felt the anti-sensation of a stun shot missing by mere centimeters. The blue bolt of light hit the long arms of a lavender weeping willow; the tree hissed and stretched its tears in vengeance. 

"Oh , please," Padme begged into her hands, head down as she ran towards an endless forest hallway. "Oh, please, oh, please." Her feet touched the soft down of the forest floor and felt it give way-- she knew she had fallen, but had no memory of it. Hair tangled in the hands of leaves and flowers, she pulled mercilessly. Her mane tore and she felt blood along he side of her face like tears, but kept moving. The world fell away beneath her-- she stood scant inches from the edge of a ravine that had imposed itself through the forest. The blossoms climbing the walls looked at Padme with mild interest while her own eyes were of the twist of twilight water far, far bellow. Another shot, and then another, voices shouting to her because they considered her an animal, mere property. Because sickness was clawing along her throat, because she could hear the Emperor's words of grim satisfaction, she held her breath and leapt from the cliff with all her might. 

Every human is afraid of falling, Padme thought wildly in the air, it's a fear we're born with. Her wings moved frantically, gathering wind and throwing it; she was aloft but unsteady as she tried to find a place for her legs, her immobile arms. 

"One and two and," Padme chanted, remembering a teacher with a face as pale s the ivory keys she taught, and a little golden box that marked out the beat of each song. Quickly, her wings fell into the rhythm and she rose a little higher, her feet heavy with the pounding of her blood. Above the range of their weapons, she watched the Stormtroopers with an ever wary eye. She thought she hear one speak to her, but the words weren't clear. With great effort, she lifted her legs, straightening and bending them in term. Perhaps flying was like swimming. "Come on," her mouth touched over the words as she saw the depths of the ravine bellow her floundering feet. A stronger push of her wings, despite the red knives t inspired in her back, and the world was moving beneath her. The wind touched over her face like water, and she cried for sheer loss of what to do. With shaky movements, she glided over the heights, watching the Stormtroopers blur and distend into small dots on the edge of the world. It was like walking down a staircase-- gradually descending on levels of air until she came closer to the bottom of the ravine. Gently, gently. The flowers turned their bell-shaped glory eyes to watch her, she felt their silent thoughts weave into her prisoners gown. It was not approval, and it was not hate; but a calm, impartial acceptance. She wondered what words the flower used for themselves; the names for the grand cities formed by trees. 

Slowly, she began to realize how often her legs were tangling in the fabric of her heavy woolen smock. The wind tugged at it too, pulled her from the sky, until she tore the clothing from her with quick, decisive terror. The gray sheaves undulated and dropped bellow her, and she left it behind entirely. A little more certain, she shimmed over the river, perfumed with a hundred, a thousand, a numbers and numbers of bloom. She reached out a hand and faltered, quickly directing her concentration back to her wings. The breath of their movement touched the water, peeled aside the veil until she could see her face, rippling and distorted by hands she no longer knew. 

'Are you an angel?' Bright blue eyes, when there was not a spot of blue on this world. 

'An angel?' 

She saw her wings spread behind and let out a low, animal, noise. Falling, she tumbled-dipped-crashed into the water, taking the liquid into her lungs and choking on it. In the roar of the current, she could hear Palpatine laughing because it was all such a good joke. 

The Emperor had found her on Dantooine, working her listless, disinterested hands in the course red soil while the sun touched and browned her back. She'd seen the soldier coming that time, too, but had not been fast enough; the blue had reached for her and taken her into the void. She remembered a cold room, where she was pinned down on her stomach like a butterfly in a specimen box. That's what she was, and she knew it, even she felt the movement of doctors reaching under her skin. 

'I like jokes, you understand,' said the eater of her naivete, 'Why aren't you laughing, dear Padme? This is the best joke of all.' 

Anakin was lost to her, she knew that then, because he had turned over to his master the moment in the junk shop, and now that other lifetime was cutting into her and planting things, new fibers, new muscles. The wings grew steadily-- when they let her loose in his cell she'd rubbed her back raw against the wall, trying in vain to ease what was just like the cutting of teeth. The tips of her new feathered appendages grew past those of her fingers; she secretly rose a few inches off the ground when all the guards had passed her room, but one brush against the wall sent her tumbling down. 

'It is his love that has mutilated you,' said Palpatine once, when she no longer spoke back but gazed at him with eyes that spoke of spinning wheels. She was dizzy, dizzy unto death with it. "You are his angel," the Emporer's mouth opened in one long, disgusting note; his teeth tight and sharp. Clearly a carnivore. 

Bursting to the surface, Padme's mouth opened and made the water into an arch. She pulled frantically with her arms, her water-loged wings heavy against her back. Collapsing in a flutter of limbs on the shore, she pressed her cheek against the violets and coughed without caring. Past the roaring f her sadness in her ears, she thought she heard someone saying that this was Iego, and welcome, welcome kind and beautiful, but maybe that was just the voice of a little boy who had lied to her before. 

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.... Yeah. I told you it was weird. ^_~

Feedback, PLEASE?


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